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Post by queenzod on Oct 1, 2022 18:09:35 GMT
Virtue signaling (on many levels), is tedious (on many levels across many platforms). From ex-smokers to health gurus, identity purists to nutritionists, everyone has an opinion, and they all think they’re the only correct ones. Boring! *Rolls eyes in Sherlock* 😜
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Post by mllemass on Oct 2, 2022 22:08:02 GMT
Our newspaper printed an AP review of Bros, and the words “Benedict Cumberbatch” jumped out at me.
So I still don’t know whether they actually mentioned Benedict and/or TPOTD in the movie, or it’s something that the reviewer knew they were referring to.
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Post by sgev1977 on Oct 2, 2022 22:18:31 GMT
They mention both BC and TPOTD according a lot of people.
Again very funny considering BC has talked about studying Fassbinder cinema at University and according to some critics this gay guy barely knows queer cinema history and sees himself as a pioneer of it. He reduces it to Brokeback Mountain, TPOTD and Call Me By Your Name not being gay enough because they didn’t hired him meanwhile he copied all the cliches of straight rom comedies for his extremely conventional flick!
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Post by sgev1977 on Oct 3, 2022 2:02:47 GMT
I just saw what it could be just a sensationalist headline claiming that this comedian said his movie bombed in the box office because straights. I just couldn’t avoid to read the comments and most of them were what you can imagine: people talking about Hollywood shoving agendas and that the movie was just bad. More interesting was that the people who said they went to see it and loved it also said they were straight, I guess, to show that they are “good” straights and not like the evil ones that made it bombed! Then there were the gays who claimed they didn’t wanted to watch it because a) they didn’t like him; b) they just hate romantic comedies.
I would guess that the main reason is that adult drama and romantic comedies sadly doesn’t attract audiences anymore so nothing political nor something against him.
More interesting IMHO, someone mentioned The Birdcage was a massive hit in the mid 1990s (and La Cage aux Folles in the 1970s). Surely, that’s the kind of mainstream movie he would claim is for and by straights! I mean he apparently said that about Guadagnino’s (a gay man!) CBYN and Mike Nichols wasn’t gay. Nathan Lane is gay, tho. and he seems be more worried about actors sexuality than filmmakers. But yeah, it’s an “old” movie that also doesn’t have any sex in it but TBF that’s also the case with a lot of romantic comedies. They aren’t about sex! Still, even if that movie is “retrograde” for today’s standards, it was widely accepted by general audiences. As it was accepted series like Will & Grace and even the much more daring Queer as Folk and the L word, which actually had a lot of sex and adult themes.
I think people doesn’t go to see too many non-franchises movie at the theatre and I’m sure that the main reason but maybe it was also contradictory to hope for a massive audience and putting it on a huge number of screens meanwhile at the same time publicized it like a movie for a small community that’s nothing like the art house acclimated films the big “majority” loves. There’s nothing bad with being niche but you can’t be niche and massive at the same time. But again, I suspect those kind of comments are more about pr and nothing more.
EDITED By the way, I saw the tweet with the headline on a gay person account and yes, she was making fun of him but she isn’t very politically correct and probably would be considered a “bad” gay by woke types because it. She is very funny, tho.!
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Post by mllemass on Oct 3, 2022 4:46:08 GMT
I was reading those negative tweets before, too, from people who didn’t see the movie. They were mostly gay people who said they never watch romantic comedies, and they felt insulted that Billy Eichner said anyone who didn’t see the movie was homophobic.
But I think most of the comments were right: people who like romcoms already watch them for free at home, so they’re going to wait until it’s streamed. Also, they said that BE is irritating and not an actor, so they certainly don’t want to watch him in a movie. I had to laugh at the comment that iBE should have had a hot actor play the lead and not himself. And many people pointed out that October is not romcom season - it’s horror movie season.
Forbes wrote an article about why the movie “underperformed” on its opening weekend, despite the great reviews. They said the BE is not a star, and it’s unrealistic to expect audiences to spend money to watch him in a movie. Also, it’s unrealistic to expect people to want to see a movie simply because it exists - which is mainly how they’ve promoted it.
(I saw The Birdcage on Broadway in NYC many years ago. I remember very little of it because our seats were terrible and were described as “partial view”, but we bought the tickets anyway! So we had a huge pillar in front of us for the entire show - ha! We could hear everything, but could only see part of it.)
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Post by sgev1977 on Oct 3, 2022 10:12:23 GMT
I just read a comment by another person he said he didn’t wanted to watch it because he hated that the publicity was lying about it being the first ever gay romantic comedy! He mentioned another recent gay rom com that was a actually a hit, Love, Simon. I checked and it made $40M from a budget of $10 so yeah, it was a hit! In 2018! Not even the 1990s! Actually, yesterday it was also mentioned by a gay kid that said this new movie is for old gays and not for his generation. He also was clear that he didn’t watched Love,Simon because it was problematic! Lol So, I thought this guy was aiming his film to the wrong generation! You can’t make feel guilty to most Gen X (especially those who does not work in media or politics!) with discourses about what they are morally obligated to watch and like! We aren’t impressionable kids! Lol
Again, he seemed to believe that only him could do “real” gay movies so probably he also considers that movie not really gay but according to the Robert Elbert site, he probably would call Fassbinder not really gay, too! It doesn’t change that people has been receptive to accesible and conventional gay comedies like his for decades!
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Post by mllemass on Oct 3, 2022 11:19:41 GMT
BE has said in lots of interviews that his favourite movies have been romcoms like When Harry Met Sally, so now he wanted to make a movie just like that. And apparently, he did. But there’s a reason they’re not making those kinds of movies anymore! The new romcoms of today all follow the same formula, and the reviews have said that Bros also follows that formula. But I just don’t find him funny enough to sit through a movie with him in it.
(I saw Love, Simon when it came out, and I hated it. I understand why it was so popular, though. It was one of those movies about teenagers where the adults/parents are 100% supportive and also barely in it, and the teenagers are wealthy and live in a gorgeous neighbourhood - so there was nothing remotely realistic about it. Which is fine! I only mention that because the friends I saw it with did like it. When I argued that Simon had horrible best friends if they immediately abandoned him when they found out his secret, my friends told me that the teenagers really are self-centred, so the movie was in fact being realistic. So which was it? If they hadn’t tried to create a dumb conflict by having his lifelong friends turn into jerks, I could have accepted the teenagers stopping at Starbucks on their way to school every morning.)
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Post by sgev1977 on Oct 3, 2022 11:28:48 GMT
I’m thinking on that Forbes article saying he isn’t a star so he should had cast someone else and I would said that he should had cast BC! 😉 But it also made me thought on Tom Hanks winning the Oscar for Philadelphia. Why he was a cast and not Ian McKellen, for example? Because he was a star and we were living in a real difficult time for gay men so having a big star in a movie about AIDS probably helped more their cause even when I would had loved to watch the future Gadalf in it (he was great in HBO’s And the Band Play On, tho. Which also had a few stars allies in small roles, including Richard Gere playing a gay millionaire). I know nowadays everything is seen with negative lenses but real or imaginary playing a gay was considering a risk for a big star so people saw those actors like well meaning toward the community not as enemies. That’s the context I remember.
But yeah, there were also some critics to all those good intentions and, if you want, straight friendly big accessible movies. That was the movement called New Queer Cinema that this guy is accused of ignoring. It probably would be hated by today wokes, tho. because most of the filmmakers were gay or lesbian but a)they still hired straight actors and b) they were wild films and frequently included murder ! A “trope” according to Tumblr kids! TPOTD would easily fit there! Lol It was about not being nice or easily accessible and causing some scandals. They were happy with being niche, tho.
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Post by sgev1977 on Oct 3, 2022 12:41:35 GMT
I just remembered other interesting comment, it was by a person who actually watched and liked the movie but was worried that he would had actually damaged the prospect of more gay movies with his attitude because he claimed he was the first and the true original person making "real" gay movies and if that headline is real (it's a tabloid!), he now is claiming straights/most people aren't interested on gay movies and would made them bomb in the box office. What he thinks Hollywood producers would do next? Give gay movies more money!
I don't understand why he or the producers went wide. He should be angry with whoever made that decision. Even Oscar films with allegedly more accessible themes and big stars go limited first. If he thought his was the niche little movie that would be massive, they should had have one strategy to made it happen. Opening it like if it were a franchise meanwhile claiming it's only for and by a minority is a very stupid idea.
EDITED Also I saw someone claiming Birdcage was a hit almost 30 years ago(!!!) because the stars were straight! Of course, he received a multiple "Nathan Lane" responses! But I guess beloved Robin Williams should not be there according the new boring laws!
There was also someone accusing Bros of being offensive because all the tropes and cliches about gay men! So I guess we have to wait for a new true real original gay movie next!
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Post by mllemass on Oct 3, 2022 13:42:25 GMT
Before Brokeback Mountain came out, there was so much negative press about it that surely it would bomb at the box office - but all the protests condemning it made me want to see it even more! Of course, all the protests were from people who hadn’t seen it and would never see it. Even so, it managed to be a huge success because it was good. I still consider it one of my very favourite movies. I think I went to see it 4 or 5 times when it was in theatres. It hung around much longer than anyone had predicted, because positive word of mouth kept audiences going to it. Does it matter if there were no gay actors in it? I had no idea (and still don’t know) if anyone was actually gay or not. It doesn’t matter - I just want to see a great movie!
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